The Reform Party.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20250, 30 May 1931, Page 14

The Reform Party.

The courage and liope of Canterbury supporters o£ the Reform Party will be strengthened by Mr Coates's straightforward speech in the Jellicoe Hall last night. It vindicated the p'oliey and actions of the Reform Party before and since the last General Election, and it exposed plainly but without rancour the mischievous part which the Government has played in the affairs of the Dominion. But what Reformers —and others —.will perhaps most warmly respect is the firmness with which Mr Coates renewed his pledge to assist the Government in the particular task it began last session, though without sinking the Party's identity or surrendering its judgnient. If anything had been required—but nothing prove that Reform has steadily set aside Pifrty (advantage and pursued the country's, it Would have been supplied by this clear sign that the Party recognises itfs duty and will not be turned away from it. On Wednesday the Hauraki electorate gave the Reform Party a remarkable assurance of its confidence, one which in the circumstances offered a very real temptation to precipitate the fall of the Government and ask the country for .a mandate to take office. . But the Party has promised to support the Government in carrying out measures of urgent national importance, and it stands by that promise. There will be few Reformers who do llot uphold Mr Coates's view and dissent from that of the president of. the Canterbury branch' of the Party, who said last night that the tinie had come for a change of attitude; but though the distinction between the voice of an individual and the voice of the Party is not likely to be lost, it is a pity that a difficult and delicate though clear responsibility should be made even a little more difficult by the necessity for drawing the distinction. "The time may have come, of course, for a change of attitude elsewhere. Nobody could think it capricious or unreasonable of the Government to decide! that the thundering-fall in its vote in Hauraki is a warning that . must be accepted at once. If Mr Forbes resigns the task he has begun, the Reform Party is, free;- but if hei cliooßes to go ; on, he is entitled still to tlie support he has received, on the same conditions. And . whatever he doubts and questions to-day, it is not likely to be the firmness of the pledge given to liiih.